


There'll Be Times (When You Are Stammering Through Tears)

by bruxabait



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Eskel Needs a Hug (The Witcher), F/M, Kaer Morhen, Light Angst, Post-The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Soft Eskel (The Witcher), Strangers to Lovers, Witchers Have Feelings (The Witcher)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:02:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24757453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bruxabait/pseuds/bruxabait
Summary: Shortly after the battle of Kaer Morhen, Brynja is leaving to return home to Ard Skellig. Eskel wishes she would stay, but he won't overstep and ask her not to go. Instead, he'll just pine quietly and be really fucking sad.
Relationships: Eskel (The Witcher)/Original Female Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	There'll Be Times (When You Are Stammering Through Tears)

**Author's Note:**

> Another one for Runa!!!!! Saying goodbye to his favourite feisty lil shield-maiden hits him like a proverbial ton of bricks!!!! Also, for anyone wondering the title is a lyric from Cracking Codes by Andrew Bird.

Short months ago, Eskel couldn’t stand her.

He had sat beside a column of pale smoke fizzling from the dying embers of their fire just before dawn while Brynja slept, and thought of all the ways she would wear on his nerves once she woke. He had even considered leaving in the hazy grey hours before light came back into the world. Leaving her to wake alone, and make her own way.

 _But,_ he had reasoned with himself, _she’s a daughter of Skellige. She’ll be lost without someone who knows their way around the Continent._

That thought had seemed in the moment to be purely logical. Without a guide, she would be vulnerable to robbery at the hands of bandits. She could have lost her way and wound up another victim of the land. She would be alone, in a place that was foreign to her, without anyone to take her hand and lead her safely over deserted battlefields strewn with corpses. Over treacherous, stinking swamps and through the vast swaths of woodland ruled by wolves and leshens and bands of men who would not think very much at all of taking one more life.

Subjecting her to a fate that cruel would go against his very nature. That was what he told himself. He had reasoned that his choice to stay with her was one driven by ethics, not sentiment.

So why, then, did saying goodbye feel like severing one part of himself from the rest?

Because he had stayed with her, and she had taken root in his heart the way creeping vines take root in a house left to rot and ruin. Because somewhere along the course of their trek across the Continent to Kaedwen, he had taken to draping his cloak over her while she slept. Because it had been unnervingly easy not to hate her anymore. Because she drank like a jaded old sailor and cursed like a mercenary, and when she spoke he felt inexplicably inclined to listen, despite the indifference he had once felt for her.

He had not felt the full weight of those small decisions, those harmless actions of endearment, until he was watching the flaxen plait running halfway down her back sway as she moved. Until he was watching her walk away, and aching with the understanding of every hopeless way he would miss her.

That knowledge of his own attachment to Brynja, arriving like a cruel twinge just before he lost sight of her indefinitely, was a blade thrust between his ribs, finding every place where it would hurt worst.

He caught the faintest breath of her scent on the breeze flowing through Kaer Morhen’s lower courtyard. Steel and salt, there for only a moment before it drifted away again.

Destiny pushed its wicked little knife deeper.

Twisted it.

_If only it were true, what they say about witchers… If only I couldn’t feel anything at all._

He wanted one more day with her. One more morning fishing on the lake, one more night on the Path, sprawled beneath the stars with her.

Just one more day, and he swore it would have been enough. He swore that letting her go would not sting this badly, if only he had one more conversation, one more hour, even. But he was kidding himself.

It would make no difference.

_This was always going to hurt._


End file.
